"O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,
When war against our freedom springs!
When war against our freedom springs!
War Poetry - 1914-17
The
editorial policy has been humanly hospitable, rather than academically
critical, especially in the case of some of the verses written by
soldiers at the Front, which, however slight in certain instances their
technical merit may be, are yet psychologically interesting as sincere
transcripts of personal experience, and will, it is thought, for that
very reason, peculiarly attract and interest the reader. It goes without
saying that there are several poems in this group which conspicuously
succeed also as works of art. For the rest, the attempt has been made,
within such limitations as have been experienced, to present pretty
freely the best of what has been found available in contemporary British
and American war verse. It must speak for itself, and the reader will
find that in not a few instances it does so with sensitive sympathy and
with living power; sometimes, too, with that quietly intimate
companionableness which we find in Gray's _Elegy_, and which John
Masefield, while lecturing in America in 1916, so often indicated as a
prime quality in English poetry. But if this quality appears in Chaucer
and the pre-Romantics and Wordsworth, it appears also in Longfellow and
Lowell, in Emerson and Lanier, and in William Vaughn Moody; for American
poetry is, after all, as English poetry,--"with a difference,"--sprung
from the same sources, and coursing along similar channels.
The new fellowship of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations which a book of
this character may, to a degree, illustrate, is filled with such high
promise for both of them, and for all civilization, that it is perhaps
hardly too much to say, with Ambassador Walter H. Page, in his address
at the Pilgrims' Dinner in London, April 12, 1917: "We shall get out of
this association an indissoluble companionship, and we shall henceforth
have indissoluble mutual duties for mankind. I doubt if there could be
another international event comparable in large value and in long
consequences to this closer association. " Mr. Balfour struck the same
note when, during his mission to the United States, he expressed himself
in these words: "That this great people should throw themselves whole-
heartedly into this mighty struggle, prepared for all efforts and
sacrifices that may be required to win success for this most righteous
cause, is an event at once so happy and so momentous that only the
historian of the future will be able, as I believe, to measure its true
proportions. "
The words of these eminent men ratify in the field of international
politics the hopeful anticipation which Tennyson expressed in his poem,
_Hands all Round_, as it appeared in the London _Examiner_, February 7,
1852:--
"Gigantic daughter of the West,
We drink to thee across the flood,
We know thee most, we love thee best,
For art thou not of British blood?
Should war's mad blast again be blown,
Permit not thou the tyrant powers
To fight thy mother here alone,
But let thy broadsides roar with ours.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and round.
"O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,
When war against our freedom springs!
O speak to Europe through your guns!
They can be understood by kings.
You must not mix our Queen with those
That wish to keep their people fools;
Our freedom's foemen are her foes,
She comprehends the race she rules.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great cause of Freedom, round and round. "
They ratify also the spirit of those poems in the present volume which
seek to interpret to Britons and Americans their deepening friendship.
"Poets," said Shelley, "are the unacknowledged legislators of the
world," and he meant by legislation the guidance and determination of
the verdicts of the human soul.
G. H. C.
_August, 1917_
THE CHOICE
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT SPEAKS:
To the Judge of Right and Wrong
With Whom fulfillment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
Our faith and sacrifice.
Let Freedom's land rejoice!
Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to us the eternal choice
Of good or ill is given.
Not at a little cost,
Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
In the drugged and doubting years,
But after the fires and the wrath,
But after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
To live with ourselves again.
editorial policy has been humanly hospitable, rather than academically
critical, especially in the case of some of the verses written by
soldiers at the Front, which, however slight in certain instances their
technical merit may be, are yet psychologically interesting as sincere
transcripts of personal experience, and will, it is thought, for that
very reason, peculiarly attract and interest the reader. It goes without
saying that there are several poems in this group which conspicuously
succeed also as works of art. For the rest, the attempt has been made,
within such limitations as have been experienced, to present pretty
freely the best of what has been found available in contemporary British
and American war verse. It must speak for itself, and the reader will
find that in not a few instances it does so with sensitive sympathy and
with living power; sometimes, too, with that quietly intimate
companionableness which we find in Gray's _Elegy_, and which John
Masefield, while lecturing in America in 1916, so often indicated as a
prime quality in English poetry. But if this quality appears in Chaucer
and the pre-Romantics and Wordsworth, it appears also in Longfellow and
Lowell, in Emerson and Lanier, and in William Vaughn Moody; for American
poetry is, after all, as English poetry,--"with a difference,"--sprung
from the same sources, and coursing along similar channels.
The new fellowship of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations which a book of
this character may, to a degree, illustrate, is filled with such high
promise for both of them, and for all civilization, that it is perhaps
hardly too much to say, with Ambassador Walter H. Page, in his address
at the Pilgrims' Dinner in London, April 12, 1917: "We shall get out of
this association an indissoluble companionship, and we shall henceforth
have indissoluble mutual duties for mankind. I doubt if there could be
another international event comparable in large value and in long
consequences to this closer association. " Mr. Balfour struck the same
note when, during his mission to the United States, he expressed himself
in these words: "That this great people should throw themselves whole-
heartedly into this mighty struggle, prepared for all efforts and
sacrifices that may be required to win success for this most righteous
cause, is an event at once so happy and so momentous that only the
historian of the future will be able, as I believe, to measure its true
proportions. "
The words of these eminent men ratify in the field of international
politics the hopeful anticipation which Tennyson expressed in his poem,
_Hands all Round_, as it appeared in the London _Examiner_, February 7,
1852:--
"Gigantic daughter of the West,
We drink to thee across the flood,
We know thee most, we love thee best,
For art thou not of British blood?
Should war's mad blast again be blown,
Permit not thou the tyrant powers
To fight thy mother here alone,
But let thy broadsides roar with ours.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and round.
"O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,
When war against our freedom springs!
O speak to Europe through your guns!
They can be understood by kings.
You must not mix our Queen with those
That wish to keep their people fools;
Our freedom's foemen are her foes,
She comprehends the race she rules.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great cause of Freedom, round and round. "
They ratify also the spirit of those poems in the present volume which
seek to interpret to Britons and Americans their deepening friendship.
"Poets," said Shelley, "are the unacknowledged legislators of the
world," and he meant by legislation the guidance and determination of
the verdicts of the human soul.
G. H. C.
_August, 1917_
THE CHOICE
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT SPEAKS:
To the Judge of Right and Wrong
With Whom fulfillment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
Our faith and sacrifice.
Let Freedom's land rejoice!
Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to us the eternal choice
Of good or ill is given.
Not at a little cost,
Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
In the drugged and doubting years,
But after the fires and the wrath,
But after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
To live with ourselves again.
